Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - June 2023
Ranging from Schubert to Jake Heggie (and taking in unaccompanied folk-song and cabaret along the way), this eclectic and imaginative recital of songs exploring the ideas of temptation and taboo is probably the German baritone's finest recording to date. It's great to hear him letting his hair down in songs like Poulenc's 'Couplets bachiques' and a delicious number from Schoenberg's Brettl-Lieder, with other highlights including a particularly biting 'Heidenröslein' and a wistful, melancholy take on the popular torch-song 'Just A Gigolo'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Debussy: C'est l'extase - La mer
Vannina Santoni (soprano), Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Mikko Franck
The main event here is the world premiere recording of C'est l'extase, which sees Robin Holloway weaving his own orchestrations of the Ariettes oubliées and four related mélodies into a rich and iridescent tapestry, his short idiomatic interludes providing the connecting threads. Santoni is every bit as luminous as Renée Fleming (who premiered the work), and Holloway's postlude segues seamlessly into an unsettling beautiful account of La mer.
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This is an hour of pure delight, from the characterful little 'Television March' which Coates composed for the BBC in 1946 to the touching portrait of the late Queen as a girl which closes The Three Elizabeths. The famous 'Dambusters' March' is delivered with a welcome lightness of touch, and the sea-shanty-cum-fugue on 'Three Blind Mice' in 'The Man from the Sea' (from the Three Men Suite) is enormous fun.
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The two Moniuszko quartets which sit at the heart of this lovely programme deserve much more exposure, springing numerous little harmonic and stylistic surprises and placing considerable technical demands on all four players (particularly in the final movements). The Lutosławskis rise to the challenges with aplomb, bringing impressive clarity and vigour to the folk-dance-inflected passages and sounding utterly ravishing in the gentle salon-music episode in the first movement of Quartet No. 1.
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The British soprano brings tremendous poise and lightly-worn intelligence to this thoughtfully-curated recital of songs from fin-de-siècle Vienna, including lieder by Alma Mahler, Joseph Marx and the teenage Korngold - the voice itself is more antique silver than gold, and sounds tailor-made for light lyric Strauss roles such as Sophie and Zdenka. And there's a sense of real collaboration with Lepper, who gets plenty of opportunities to shine in the Marx songs in particular.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Vaughan Williams: Job, Old King Cole & The Running Set
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Manze
This fabulous postscript to Manze's cycle of the Vaughan Williams symphonies has all the virtues which made that series such a triumph: finely-judged pacing and balance, punchy brass when required, and wonderfully expressive string-playing throughout. It's great to hear the seldom-recorded early ballet Old King Cole (especially in such a colourful, committed performance as this), and the rumbustious account of The Running Set had me wondering why this exuberant, offbeat little piece doesn't get out more.
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Don't even think about attempting this one on headphones: the gloriously over-the-top Symphony involves fifteen trumpets squaring up to a thunderous organ solo, so crank up your sound-system and make sure the neighbours are out (or at least warned). In between the bells and whistles, though, Beermann finds plenty of light and shade in the score, and the Gayaneh Suite is brilliantly done - especially the famous 'Sabre Dance', taken at breakneck speed and with mightily impressive precision.
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Hearing Britten's Michelangelo Sonnets in Jeremy Sams's direct English translations is quite a revelation, underlining the fact that this is a cycle about a 'love that dare not speak its name' with a frankness which would have been nigh-on impossible at the time the work was premiered. Thomas and Burnside do it full, impassioned justice, and the Welsh tenor's own SWAN (combining tenderness and flashes of quirky humour) acts as a most effective counterpart; Tippett's Songs of Achilles, meanwhile, reveal a muscular core to the voice which suggests that the more dramatic Britten roles could well figure in his future...
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
